A US deportation flight carrying migrants from multiple countries, including an Iranian asylum seeker, landed in the Central African Republic, highlighting controversial third-country deportation deals.
A deportation flight carrying at least two dozen migrants, including an Iranian woman facing persecution in her home country, landed in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Friday.
This marks another instance of the Trump administration's controversial agreements with African and Latin American nations to accept third-country deportees. The Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest and most conflict-ridden countries, is among at least nine African nations that have entered into such arrangements. Under these often-secret pacts, part of a broader U.S. crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, according to advocacy groups.
Immigration lawyers describe the use of third-country deportations as a legal loophole that allows the administration to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries. It was unclear how many migrants were on the flight that left Louisiana late Thursday and arrived in Bangui, the capital of CAR.
Among those scheduled for deportation were individuals from Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, and Afghanistan, according to Ali Rahnama, interim executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who has been in touch with some of the migrants. Three Iranian women in the U.S. were originally slated to be sent to CAR, said Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers.
She noted that two of them obtained emergency court orders temporarily halting their deportation while judges review the legality of the government's actions. All three had been granted court protection against deportation to Iran after judges ruled they faced credible fears of persecution based on politics or religion.
'Despite being granted withholding of removal, these individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network. We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled,' said Emily Trostle, an attorney representing two of the women. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the case on Thursday, citing security reasons for not confirming future removal operations.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Central African Republic has been plagued by years of conflict between pro-government forces and armed groups and is one of the poorest countries globally. Despite vast gold reserves, one in three people live on less than $2 a day.
It is also one of the countries where the Russian mercenary group Wagner was first active in Africa, providing security for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra and fighting rebel groups. The country remains a close Russian ally in Africa despite recent tensions over Russia's push to replace Wagner with the state-controlled Africa Corps. Rahnama expressed concerns about sending an Iranian asylum seeker to CAR, noting Russia's influence in the country and Moscow's close security ties with Iran.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN-affiliated agency, said it would provide post-arrival humanitarian assistance to the migrants at the request of Central African authorities. The U.S. earlier this year awarded $85 million to the IOM for operations in CAR to assist migrants and promote community stabilization
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